“ROMANTIC AESTHETICS”

Q1:Discuss in detail the similarities and differences between the

Classical and Romantic poetic style?

ANS: CLASSICAL POETIC STYLE:

Classicism is aesthetic attitudes and principles based on culture, art and literature
of ancient Greece and Rome, and characterized by emphasis on form, simplicity,
proportion, and restrained emotion.

Characteristics of Classicism are belief in reason, civilized, modern, sophisticated,

interest in urban society, human nature, love, satire, expression of acceptance,
moral truth, realism, beleif in good and evil, religion, philosophy, generic
obstruction, impersonal objectivity, public themes, formal correctness, idea of
order.

Some of the most famous lines in the history of literature come from the writing
of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare used a metrical pattern iambic penta verse.
His plays were composed using blank verse, although there are passages in all the
plays that deviate from the norm and are composed of other forms of poetry and
simple prose.

Shakespeare sonnets are in the iambic pentameter. Shakespeare wrote his earlier
plays in the traditional style of the time. He relied heavily on using drawn out
sometimes extravagant, metaphorsand narcissisms. His style often sounded
pompous and pretentious. Shakespeare first original comed called “The Two
Gentlemen of Verona” shows an undeveloped and conflicting writing style.

The style of writing lent itself to the theatricality of a play, which was as much
about using the language beautifully as it was about telling a good story or
furthering the plot. Shakespeare gradually developed and changed his writing
style from the traditional form to a more self expressive.

John Donne, whose poetic reputation languished before he was rediscovered in

the ealy part of the twentieth century is remembered today as the leading
exponent of a style of verse known as “metaphysical” poetry, which flourished in
the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Donne is valuable not simple
as a representative writer but also as a unique one. In his best poems, Donne
mixes the discourses of the physical and the spiritual; over the course of his
career, Donne gave sublime expression to both realism.

Donne, who lived a generation after Shakespeare, took advantage of his divided
nature to become the greatest metaphysical poet of the seventeenth century;
among the poets of the inner conflict, he is one of the greatest of all time.

Ben Johnson was an English playwright and best known for his satiric comedies. In
many peoples opinion he was next to William Shakespeare the greatest dramatic
genius of the English Renaissance roughly the fourteenth through sixteenth
centuries.

He was always considered an impressive and respected figure Jonson wrote a

large number of poems. Jonson’s poetic style also tends to be simple and
unadorned yet highly polished as in the pigram. He continued his scholarly
students of the classics, which occupied him throughout his active life.

The poetic style of John Milton, also known as Milton verse, Miltonic epic, or
Milton blank verse was a highly influential poetic structure popularized by Milton.
Milton was not the first to use blank verse, his use of it was very influential and he
became known for the style. Milton verse style was very influential.

In particular, Miltonic balnk verse became the standerd for those attempting to
write English epics for centuries.

ROMANTIC POETIC STYLE:

Romanticism emerged as a reaction against Neoclassicism. The Neoclassical age
emphasized on reason and logic. The Romantic period wanted to break away from
the traditions and conventions that were dear to the Neoclassical age and make
way for individuality and experimentation. One of the fundamentals of Romanticism
is the belief in the natural goodness of man, the idea that man in a state of nature
would behave well but is hindered by civilization.

Characteristics of Romanticism are belief in feelings, imagination, Intuition,

Primitive, Medieval, natural modes, rural solitude, aesthetic, spiritual, value of
external nature, love for vision, mysteriousness, idea, infinite, myth-making,
beauty, truth, faith in progress, belief in man and goodness, individual speculation,
revelation, concrete particulars, subjectivity, private themes, individual
expressiveness, intensity, curiosity, images, symbols, common language, self-
consciousness, romantic Hellenism.

Style is adebatable thing about Worsworth. Many critics say that he has two
styles. A few argue that he has many styles and still some even go to the extent of
saying that he has no style at all.

Wordsworth had a belief that poetic style should be as simple and sincere as the
language of everyday life, and that the more the poet draws on elemental the
better for his art. A poem like the one on daffodils represents the successful
simple style too.

Wordsworth use of the nobly-plain style has something unique and unmatchable.
Wordsworth prefers generally to employ an unostentatious ascetic style.

Samuel Taylor Colridge, a leader of the British Romantic movement. Colridge

renounced poetic vocation in his thirtieth year and set out to define and
defend heart as a practicing critic. Poetry arrived at truth in its own way,
and that way was “more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and
dependent on more, and more fugitive causes”.

John Keats was a romantic poet who wrote Ode. An Ode is a type of lyrical stanza.
The Odes are Keats most distinctive poetic achievement were love, beauty,
joy, nature, music,and the morality of human life. He used a blod and
daring writing style. His style is characterized by Semual imagery and
contains many poetic devices such as alliteration, personification,
assonance, metaphors and consonance. All of these devices work together
to create rhythem and music in his poems.

Shelley discuss the power of both seen and unseen nature throughout his entire
canon. This is primarily how critics have come to classify the bard as a
“Romantic”. If there is one element of social theory to take from Shelley’s
poetry. He was standing up against the wickedness of authority in the name
of free people, he was outcast by the very people he sought to encourage,
for they disapproved of his unconventional lifestyle in love and marriage in
addition to his personal goal.